WA business group hit for its RSPT stand
The parliamentary secretary for Western and Northern Australia has scored the WA Chamber of Commerce and Industry for its two-faced approach on the resources super profits tax, stressing that the business lobby group needs to assume a clear stand for the economic future of the state.
Gary Gray is puzzled that the chamber has taken a clear opposition on the proposed measures but at the same time, it issued a report with projections that WA would require some additional 500,000 workers over the next 10 years to face up with the prospective growth in the mining sector.
He said that CCI is seemingly espousing a confusing stand of being political and hypocritical at the same time when it said that "the mining industry will be decimated but its own analysis showed not only will the industry grow, but it will grow fantastically."
Mr Gray is even surprised that the CCI would release projections that the mining industry would create up to 500,000 new jobs when it had declared earlier that the government's proposed tax would kill the mining sector.
However, CCI chief executive James Pearson countered that their predictions were based on WA's growth potentials with considerations on existing lined-up projects and "if the resources super profits tax threatens those projects it could have a serious impact on job creation in the state."
He also pointed out that the CCI report was compiled prior to the announcement of the proposed mining tax by the federal government.
Mr Pearson said that the chamber stands firm on its belief that "if the super tax were to be implemented in its current form then we would need to work out exactly what impact it would have, not just on the state's economy but on future job prospects for workers in WA."